Much awaited debate on the constitution of India in the two houses of the parliament from December 13 to December 17, 2024 is over. This will be recognised as the most memorable and constructive debate of the winter session of this parliament. The issue was discussed and debated in connection with the 75th anniversary of the enactment of the constitution of India under the topic, “Glorious journey of 75 years of the constitution of India”. The Lok Sabha discussed the issue on December 13-14, 2024 and the Rajya Sabha debated it on December 16-17, 2024. The long and heated discourse made history of sorts in many ways.
This idea of a debate on the constitution was in fact initiated by the opposition parties, which the ruling side immediately and gladly accepted. Accordingly, the dates were finalised, and the discourse went on smoothly as compared to the proceedings of the two houses on other days during the current session. The opposition had a golden opportunity to present their point of view on this issue which they had been raising in the public for the last almost a year. However, it seems that they missed the opportunity very badly and instead handed over the same to the treasury benches subconsciously or by their failure to grab the given opportunity. The ruling bloc surely made use of the opportunity and their speakers stole the show.
Unfortunately for the opposition, there is a serious dearth of good parliamentary speakers on the opposition benches in both the houses of parliament. Instead, the treasury benches have a better battery of good speakers on their benches in both the houses. There was a strong norm and usage in the past of doing serious homework by the speakers in the parliament before their participation in such a pointed debate. They would do great research work on the topic of the discussion, bring facts and figures, statements and quotations of great leaders and authors and writers to the fore, make impressive presentations to convince even the unconvinced opponents by their logic and arguments. That sort of a tradition, by and large, seems to have vanished now. However, some members of parliament, particularly the senior ones on both sides still do it with a deep commitment and dedication.
The debate was led by the Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh in the Lok Sabha and by the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman in the Rajya Sabha. It was Priyanka Gandhi who was the first speaker from the opposition in the Lok Sabha and Millikarjun Kharge did the same in the Rajya Sabha. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi replied to the debate in the end in the lower house and Amit Shah, the Home Minister did so in the upper house. Besides the above-mentioned members of Parliament, a number of other prominent members made their presentation in both houses of parliament. The speakers besides others included Anurag Thakur, Kiren Rijuji, Ravi Shanker Prasad, Rahul Gandhi, JP Nadda, Lallan Singh, Hardeep Singh Puri, Mukul Vasnik, Sanjay Kumar Jha, Brij Lal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Praful Patel, Anupriya Patel, Tejasvi Surya, Mohua Moitra, Kapil Sibal, Vaiko, Sudhanshu Trivedi and Ramji Lal Suman.
Since it was for the first time that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had to speak in the Lok Sabha, accordingly, many eyes were focussed on her performance. She was unfortunately unimpressive in her debut performance, mainly because of her incoherence and out-of-context content. She in her bravado went against her own party’s government in Himachal Pradesh and had to be reminded by her nearest colleague on the benches that HP was a Congress ruled state. Rahul Gandhi, as usual, was critical of the government without tangible arguments, facts, figures and logic. He referred to stories in the Hindu epics without any reference to the context and their connect with the topic of the debate. He was completely unequal to the task in hand on his pet topics like ‘Changes in constitution’ and ‘Caste census’ etc though he had the gifted opportunities in his hand.
The speeches made by Anurag Thakur, Kiran Rijuji and Sudhanshu Trivedi were, as per their reputation, to the point and apt. Equally was the presentation made by Manu Abhishek Singhvi very concise and critical of the government. Speaker after speaker in both the houses tried to make all efforts in their books to tear apart the arguments of the opposite side. But the most impressive, convincing, and full of facts presentations were made by the senior members of the Parliament. Mallikarjun Kharge was less focused on his own content than on the responses to the intermittent poking by the treasury benches. He couldn’t make a great impact except accusing the government and the BJP of being critical of Nehru and Congress. He also deviated from the topic a number of times and could have made a better impact on the proceedings. In contrast, JP Nadda, leader of the House in Rajya Sabha made a mark by his lucid presentation.
Frustration was writ large on the faces of the opposition members during the whole debate due to their continuous failure in the elections one after the other. There is a visible clear gap between the spirit of the mandates of the recently held assembly elections and the by-polls and the arguments that they are making in and outside the parliament, and this has surely overtaken the Congress in a big way despite their false sense of entitlement. The Congress is unable to recognise its radically collapsing acceptance among the masses particularly after 2014. This was reflected in the speeches made by their members during the debate in the parliament. They continue to be guided by the inference that the existence of the Modi government was/is an aberration. The government could have also seized the opportunity and tabled the Shah Commission report on Emergency-era excesses during the debate as the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha in the previous session had advised them to procure the same from the available archives.
The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who is an orator par excellence, as per his reputation, dwelt at length on the subject and took his campaign into the camp of the opposition very successfully in his concluding speech. He attacked the feudalistic and dynastic politics of Congress and especially the Nehru-Gandhi family. He started with Nehru, referred to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi but desisted from taking the names of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi though making pointed references to them and their deeds a number of times during his speech. He said that the Congress has tasted the blood of the constitution and would never desist from hunting it given an opportunity overtly or covertly. He didn’t go for any sort of rhetoric and focussed on facts and documents to prove his points. He used the historical documentary evidence from the parliamentary debates and proceedings to substantiate his arguments.
PM Modi referred to the first constitutional amendment by the parliament under the Prime Ministership of Pt. Nehru when there was no elected parliament and the government in the country in 1951. He said that the Congress continued this process even after 1951 and referred to the 24th Constitutional Amendment of 1971 brought in by the Indira Gandhi government, which sought to give Parliament the power to amend any part of the constitution including the Fundamental rights. The Indira Gandhi regime, in 1975 Emergency-era, went to the extent of suspending fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution, which are recognised as the soul of our constitution. Through the 39th Amendment Act, the Congress placed the election of the President, Vice president, Speaker of Lok Sabha and the Prime Minister beyond the judicial scrutiny. All these instances are enough to expose the actual mindset of the Congress in regard to the constitution and the idea of the freedom of expression enunciated in the constitution.
He also referred to the Mandal Commission report and the attempts made by the Congress, particularly by Rajiv Gandhi, to oppose implementing the recommendations in respect of the OBCs. The so-called first family, which always opposed the reservations, is now making a hue and cry about the same. The constitution of the National Advisory Council (NAC) under Sonia Gandhi was sort of a ‘parallel cabinet’ created by the Congress. He in this regard referred to a book in which Manmohan Singh, the former PM, candidly admitted that the Congress president was the actual centre of power. Without mentioning the name of Rahul Gandhi, the PM remarked that an arrogant person in the Congress tore off the ordinance passed by the cabinet of the nation publicly. Such was/is the respect for the constitution and the constitutional institutions in the minds of the Congressmen and their leaders.
He lambasted the Congress and its leaders for claiming victory in their defeat in the 2024 general elections and sarcastically said that although success sometimes fills one with arrogance but the Congress got heavily drunk with acute arrogance even in their defeat. PM Modi during his entire deliverance of speech in the parliament exhibited an astute persona completely filled with self-confidence and calmness. He supported the concept of UCC and called it the Secular Civil Code. He also proposed eleven resolutions to uphold the spirit of the constitutional values, and among them, “Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat” is the cherished goal of every citizen of the nation.
